Drama In Daytona
DRAMA IN DAYTONA
RACE WATCH
Does motorcycle racing in America have a new future?
KEVIN CAMERON
BUBBLE, BUBBLE, toil and trouble! Where shall I begin? Yoshimura Suzuki dominated Daytona's Superbike race as we all expected, for theirs is the only full effort in the paddock. Mat Miadin was first, Ben Spies second. Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo broke up a potential Suzuki sweep by finishing third ahead of Tommy Hayden. Jamie Hacking was fifth on a Monster Energy Kawasaki entry. The reduced-displacement Daytona 200, for 600cc Formula Xtreme, was surprise-packed, as the smooth-and-steady apparent win by Erion Honda’s Josh Hayes was overturned by a claim of technical infraction (metal removal from the crankshaft), making Chaz Davies (Attack Kawasaki) the winner, with last year’s surprise winner Steve Rapp (also on an Attack Kawi) in second. Larry Pegram (Ducati 848) was third and Martin Cardenas (EMGO/Suzuki) fourth. Fifth was another surprise: the BMW HP2 Twin of Brit Richard Cooper.
Who can forget last year's 200-miler? Three Hondas expired within moments of each other-as if victims of a sinister plot executed by radio control (blame went to race-spec fuel pumps). Naturally, no one is talking about Hayes' crank shaft; arguments go to an appeal board. By rule, we'll know within 45 days. Would the AMA really DQ the event sponsor's winning bike?
Want more? Six-time 200 winner Miguel Duhamel was out of the ’08 running, having fried his Honda’s clutch at the start. Or was he? Honda personnel were reportedly told by AMA officials to send Duhamel back out on his spare bike, which they did. He soon forged his way back to near the front. Oops, all for naught-the rule on spare bikes applies only to a red-flag situation. About lap 53 of the scheduled 69, he was shown the black flag. Sorry!
Former World Superbike champ Neil
Hodgson, starting from pole (1:39.347) on an American Honda entry, was close behind Hayes near the end when his engine disassembled, releasing liquids. Jake Zemke, also well-placed and in contention on another Erion Honda, received his bolt of bad luck in his first pit stop when the rear axle couldn’t engage its threads.
Thursday brought two hard-fought contests, one in Superstock (Aaron Yates, on a Jordan Suzuki, was the winner, having qualified at 1:38.231) and the other in Supersport (won by Ben Bostrom on a factory Yamaha YZF-R6, qualifying at 1:40.346). Much as expected, the top 12 finishers in Superstock were Suzukis, while
That’s just the meat course-racing. Now for the vegetables: AMA, our lifetime sanctioning body, announced that it has sold Pro Racing to an entity called Daytona Motorsports Group (DMG), consisting of Daytona’s Jim France, former AMA roadrace director Roger Edmondson (manager for the past several years of Daytona’s Grand-Am sports car series), Tom Bledsoe (Daytona treasurer) and David Atlas, a lawyer.
Broad aspects of this change were revealed in a press conference at which first the new AMA CEO, Rob Dingman, and then Edmondson, spoke. Dingman surprised many by making an official apology to Edmondson for the AMA’s treatment of him during the early 1990s, which had resulted in the celebrated $3 million lawsuit, decided in Edmondson’s favor.
Edmondson then spoke quietly, articulately and persuasively, saying, “Superbike will remain the premier class of AMA racing,” but not defining what “Superbike” may come to mean. He continued by saying there are no plans to change venues.
Why was DMG chosen by the AMA, rather than one of the 14 other “suitors”? Because none of the others could alleg-
edly be persuaded to take on all the offered racing disciplines-roadrace, outdoor motocross, dirt-track, hillclimb, supermoto and ATV To the question, “Is this a lease or a sale of rights?” came the answer, “It is a full sale; we are buying them.” Although managed by DMG, the former Pro Racing program will still be called “AMA racing,” and the speakers sat before a graphic backdrop consisting of nine repetitions of the current AMA logo.
Edmondson praised the operations of Live Nation, saying, “That does create a template for us.” Live Nation holds a contract from AMA to produce Supercrossaside from the Daytona round, which is the property of the Speedway-through 2019.
Will motorcycles become standardized “parity bowling balls” under the new management? NASCAR’s “Car of Tomorrow” imposes a rigidly enforced spec body for its top four-wheel series. Edmondson replied, “We have no plans for a ‘motorcycle of tomorrow.’ We plan to race real motorcycles that you can buy.”
Because Daytona’s managers prefer for tire safety that no one race at more than 180 mph on their high banking, the nature of future AMA Superbike racing is unclear. Some possibilities are that 1) lOOOcc Superbikes will be unchanged but will not race at Daytona; 2) 1 OOOcc Superbikes will be restricted to reduced power and top speed; or 3) the present 600cc FX class may be renamed “Superbike,” with or without changes to its permitted level of modifications.
DMG is working quickly, Edmondson said, to determine 2009 classes and rules so that teams may have maximum time in which to prepare.
There was heartening evidence of new decisiveness in race management, despite this event being run by the AMA. Although rain threatened Thursday’s Superstock and Supersport programs, they were gridded and run before rain could arrive. Rain poured down on Friday night’s Supercross but the event slogged on to its conclusionKevin Windham on a Honda running down the water-logged Yamaha of points-leader Chad Reed (credited with seventh, based on laps completed), after the two had taken turns bogging to a halt in the deep glue. Then high winds Saturday morning compelled more adjustments-putting the 200 first at 3 p.m. and the 15-lap Superbike event second at 5. We’re not used to this effective decision-making but we could come to like it.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the
political news. Now back to the stuff that really interests me at Daytona.
Pundits decry Suzuki’s long Superbike success and whine for “parity,” but there is a simple reason for such dominance: Suzuki operates the only full-strength Superbike team in the series. American Honda no longer races HRC Superbikes but home-builds its own in the U.S. for reasons that remain unclear. Kawasaki farms out its racing to satellite teams (one of which-Attack-has now won the Day-
tona 200 twice). Yamaha’s policy oscillates, sometimes making a heavy effort, now throttling back. Daytona paddock insiders suggest that if the highly experienced Suzuki crew and riders were given any of the other brands of bike, they would still win championships. What this means is that racing is too complicated to be pointand-clicked at will by policy-makers, and success is rare for corporate managers who hire “teams” off a Rolodex. The value of a team lies in its experience and ability to work together.
When Mladin arrived at Yoshimura years ago, Suzuki’s program was at a low point and the team truck was parking at the back of the paddock so as not to get in the way. Previous new team riders, dismayed by machine problems, told interviewers, “the bikes really have a lot of potential.” This is rider-speak for “I’ve made a disastrous career mistake.”
Mladin, assisted by veteran fellow countrymen as crew and Ammar Bazzaz as computer and data engineer, got results that persuaded the factory to give more help. Great things were accomplished, and the combination was reinforced by the coming of the very experienced Peter Doyle as crew chief. This is the proven pattern of success in roadracing: that a great rider of strong character, backed by an effective and enduring team, wins the respect of the factory, forging a creative partnership. This is what happened with John Surtees at MV Agusta, Kenny Roberts with Yamaha and Mick Doohan at Honda. It has worked well for Mladin and Suzuki.
Other manufacturers do things differently. It’s tempting to keep possible fail-
ure at arm’s length by use of satellite teams. The expense of racing makes halfbuilt kit bikes more attractive than fullfactory equipment. Management today is most comfortable with its own kind in charge-even if race results are a little weak. Therefore the trend is away from employing racers like Kel Carruthers or Rob Muzzy as team managers.
Big Daytona 200 news was the presence of a team of four of the new overhead-cam, flat-Twin BMW HP2 Sports (their 1130cc displacement permitted due to air-cooling). Riders Cooper and Brian Parriott finished fifth and sixth on these giant latter-day Rennsports, making the American and German crew almost unbearably happy. The other two machines were out in early crashes. Spicing up this achievement is the clear statement that BMW will field a World Superbike entry in 2009, a chain-driven machine with a transverse inline-Four and the usual “world kit” suspension, wheels and brakes. We have all hoped BMW would one day have the stick to go head-to-head with the Japanese and the Italians, for its Formula One success shows it has the necessary engineering depth. However romantic it may be to fly a Triplane in Top Gun fighter competition, a serious shot at winning
requires state-of-the-art equipment. I am delighted that BMW is now testing it.
The BMW crew ran one HP2 on a local dyno at 121 hp, then drained and refilled its gas tank with one of the badsmelling high-energy fuels and got 128. Seeing a lot of drums marked “VP MR 11,” I Googled and learned that this material supplies “up to 6 percent more power” than conventional race gas, but that there is a corresponding loss of octane number at 90 MON. How does this work? Octane requirement drops quite a bit at higher
revs because there’s less time for the chemical reactions that lead to detonation. How much do you want to pay? I hear of “gasolines” all the way to $500 a gallon.
The Jordan Suzuki team has a new Superbike engine spec this year, based upon specialist-made parts actually designed in the USA by engine builders Gemini Technology Systems of Mukwonago, Wisconsin. Good stuff! This gives the team control of power development. Earlier engines had been built from the Yosh kit parts catalog. They were rewarded with a sixth from Yates and a 10th from new number-two Geoff May.
Michael Jordan does not underwrite this team. Rather, the basis is 1) no money of his own; 2) no personal appearances; and 3) just the name value contributed by the Jordan side. This is not unusual, as we learned from conversation with a motorsports marketing specialist. The team is supported by outside sponsors, part of whose return on investment is simple association with the Jordan “brand” Something I found very attractive is the team’s statement that they have cut back on hospitality, hotels and fine dining in the interest of having enough of the parts they need. I wonder about teams that field more tractor trailers for their hospitality than they do for the team. I realize one thing morphs into another and the money tends to go where the payoff is strongest, but it’s racing that interests me.
The Kawasakis at one stage were the fastest Superbikes from the chicane back to start-finish, so alarmed members of other teams were soothed by the green scooters’ difficulties in getting off comers. More work to do. Power isn’t everything, but it’s a good start! So is winning the FX 200 for the second year in a row.
Now a word about traction control: We spoke with Stefano Perotta, the Magneti Marelli engineer who works closely with Yamaha on its racing electronics. He confirmed that motorcycle electronics is not a turnkey operation. A team cannot just tie-wrap the mil-spec harness in place, plug in the boxes and fire its expensive
riders because now the bikes ride themselves. See what happened at Qatar in MotoGP this same weekend? Casey Stoner won again, but the other, presumably just-aselectronic Ducatis were nowhere. Rider skill is paramount in this business-no matter what rules or technology are in place. Mladin made this point: Do what you like, but the fast riders will go to the front.
During Yamaha U.S.’s attempts to come to terms with electronics last season, rider Jason DiSalvo was so discombobulated that he wanted everything turned off. He’s not the first to have been spooked in this way.
One can make a useful analogy between modern electronics and carburetors. Imagine that we give our laptop techs carburetors and tell them to make them work. Carbs have five overlapping control systems, and if you start tuning with the wrong one, you’re going down a dead-end street that wastes your time and gets nowhere. Your engine gets worse everywhere but in the one area where you are working. Because the systems overlap, you have to know how an adjustment to one affects the others. Only when you figure out a correct method of working do you begin to get results. So it is with electronics. Yamaha U.S. is beginning to get it now-DiSalvo pushed in among the Yosh Suzukis to finish third in Superbike, albeit 15 seconds down from leader Mladin.
Think about it: We write software for anti-spin, and now our riders complain that they can’t steer with the throttle. Now what? Okay, we add GPS capability-and many thousands of extra lines of code to control it-and then have the rider set his anti-spin levels corner by corner. Or we set out sector beacons. Oops, practice ended before we finished the settings. Now what? Uh, well, we could do what they do in Europe: let the computer control two throttles and give the other two to the rider. Now when the rider makes a little mistake, the computer can restore traction. But if the rider takes a big handful, he can override the computer and steer with the throttle. This game is not plugand-play! It takes real and concentrated work to achieve lower lap times. Why, that’s just like racing!
What changes can we expect to see with AMA racing under new management? On the known plus side, Roger Edmondson knows how to run a race program and he knows how to keep a meeting moving to a vote. The organization behind him knows racing can’t make money unless a lot of people want to see it. That requires serious, thoughtful promotion of a kind we have never seen in American two-wheel racing but with which NASCAR is familiar. As Edmondson put it, “We know it will be successful.” Another point to consider is that Jim France genuinely likes motorcycles and has for years.
On the other hand, no one knows what rules DMG will introduce. Will 2009 run under rules already planned by the AMA (possibly a two-class, Supersport/Superbike structure)? Edmondson replied, “I do not plan to blindly adopt them.” Early in the era of limited-modifications Supersport classes, the AMA was tempted to adopt something similar as its top class, eliminating fancy $30,000 forks and CNCported cylinder heads in favor of less-trick bikes that could make more riders competitive. Might this be a basis for future racing? It might, but there is no way to know. Will there be a non-factory, entrylevel class? Not known. We just have to wait.
